Introduction
Our guiding research questions include:
- How have Washington public schools been funded in the past few years (NEED YEARS), particularly for districts serving high-poverty and students of color?
- How have McCleary school finance reforms changed schools funding sources per pupil?
- How have these changes varied across districts?
- How do schools spend their resources?
B1: Revenue source for high- and low-poverty districts
Federal, state, and local revenue source for high- and low-poverty districts
Revenue Breakdown by Category

- Poverty defined using US Census SAIPE District Estimates for 2019 and percentage of students receiving free and reduced price lunch
- SAIPE poverty percentage calculated by (Estimated Number of Relevant Children 5 to 17 years old in Poverty Related to the Householder/Population of Relevant Children 5 to 17 years of Age)
- Plots include the mean with standard error bars of adjusted dollar values for each revenue source
B2: Revenue source for districts serving students of color
Revenue Breakdown by Category


- I didn’t add error bars due to overlap. Adding would be simple if it’s necessary
- More change between years across all quartiles, no consistent slope from 2015-2019
- Interesting groups for each revenue source
- Federal revenue has quartiles 1st, 2nd, 3rd grouped together below top quartile
- State has highest and lowest quartiles receiving a greater dollar amount, when mid-ranged quartiles receive less in comparison
- Local appears to be the inverse of federal, with top quartile receiving less local revenue compared to all other quartiles
B3: Spatial distribution of school funding
OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile
Source: "/private/var/folders/vp/kyx63ql12dggnl_3zsdqpsh80000gn/T/RtmpLwkzWl/53", layer: "53"
with 295 features
It has 18 fields